I would like to apologize to Fox News personality Sean Hannity for ever suggesting that he is a racist. I realize now that he is, in fact, a fascist. An authoritarian bootlicker; a dull-minded propagandist for the power of the moment; an amoral and unprincipled empty void with his own private jet; a toady; a McCarthyite; a buffoon; a coward; a fool.
You will recognize this as the same harmonica solo that the Fox News band has been wheezing out for years now. Even when Sean Hannity was tasked by his corporate masters with personally rollin' coal to Tea Party protests breathlessly promoted by the "news" channel, he still purported to believe that protests against his masters’ point of view were the fraudulent machinations of other elite people who also had private jets and powerful media connections but who, uncannily, remained forever invisible. As a self-declared interpreter of the American people, Sean Hannity would like us to believe that he himself cannot fathom the notion of any of those Americans having strong opinions of their own unless some other wealthy man paid them to have those opinions.
Or—and this is the far more likely possibility and the only provable one—he is a propagandist.
He is fully aware there was no secret sponsor of the nationwide protests. He is promoting the notion that there was such a thing in a conscious, specific effort to delegitimize public opposition to his preferred party and leader. By planning out a segment of fake news. By lying. By, to use the most accurate word, crafting propaganda.
So we should all apologize to Sean Hannity for previously presuming that he was merely a racist or overly partisan. It seems evident now that he is quite firmly the realm of Alex Jones, declaring invisible conspiracies behind every tree, or of Joe McCarthy, in possession of definitive proof of plots against America that he will wave around but never actually let anyone see. He is a propagandist. He is anti-American. He has done more direct damage to American democracy via his lies than any foreign spy has ever managed via espionage, and his every act and opinion is calibrated to delegitimize American democracy in service to one-party, one-leader rule.
Our apologies for not being sufficiently clear to begin with. We hope this will act as sufficient correction. Oh, and he never did clear up the “bankrolling” theory.